Ghosts of Gondwana: in the Company of Trees
Digital Exhibition Catalogue
Ghosts of Gondwana: In the Company of Trees grew from many months spent walking, looking and listening on a property in Maleny. The forest there has been logged and farmed, and later covered by lantana. Through ongoing restoration, it is returning.
The plants, birds and insects in these works all belong to this place. I made the work by paying close attention to the trees and to the relationships that help the forest continue.
Below, you can see the works in the exhibition, with their materials, dimensions, prices and current availability. I’d love you to visit if you can. The Little Red Cottage is open Thursday to Sunday, 10am–4pm, until 1 November. If you can’t make it to Maleny, you’re welcome to contact me about a work.
I’ll also be giving an artist talk at the Cottage on Saturday 24 October, from 2–3pm.
The forest standing around us today is part of an unimaginably long continuation.
Across deep time, these forests have changed, contracted and regenerated. Some plants growing in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland belong to lineages with origins in Gondwana. Other plant lineages evolved later as Australia separated, moved north and its climate changed. Together, these plants form a living forest carried forward through seed, succession, adaptation and relationship.
This tree came from another tree. That tree came from another.
Ghosts of Gondwana began with an interest in ancient rainforest and deep time. It became personal when I spent time walking, watching and listening on a private property where rainforest is returning after logging, agriculture and years of lantana growth.
I came to know particular trees and the lives gathered around them: staghorns held high in a red cedar, bees humming in a flowering blue quandong, birds moving through the canopy, and insects revealed through traces of their work. The forest was not a collection of separate species, but a living network of dependence, exchange and support.
The works bring together photography, cyanotype, embossing, printmaking, artist books and sound. Cyanotype became the central process. Each cyanotype is formed through exposure to sunlight and washing in water—elements that also sustain the forest. I use this early photographic process in contemporary ways, combining plant material and layered stencils with other printmaking and embossing processes.
The works consider endurance and resilience, but also vulnerability: the reliance of one life upon another, and what becomes possible through time, care and coexistence.
The ghosts of Gondwana remain in what continues to grow and in the relationships that allow the forest to endure. They remind us that we, too, belong within this living system.
Close Attention – awe begins with close attention.
Through wet cyanotype, these works focus on structures often passed over: new growth, ageing shields, branching veins, the canopy of a tree fern, and fungi growing on dead wood.
Isolated and enlarged, familiar forms become landscapes in themselves. They reveal beauty, but also vulnerability—growth, ageing, decay and renewal held within their structures.
Attention becomes a form of respect.
Wet cyanotype on 250gsm Fleur de Coton printmaking paper
Artwork: 44 × 27 cm
Frame: 72 × 52.5 cm
Framed in oak behind Artglass AR 70
AU $1200 each
Hidden Relationships – a forest is not made by trees alone.
Each work brings together a plant with a bird or insect connected to it through food, pollination, seed dispersal or the completion of its life cycle. Cyanotype plant forms float above blind-embossed birds and insects. The embossings give form to lives that remained unseen, their presence understood through the relationships that sustain the forest.
Together, these works reveal the forest’s interconnectedness. One life feeds or shelters another, pollinates its flowers or disperses its seeds.
To belong within a forest is to exist in relationship.
Wet cyanotype floating over blind embossing using 250gsm Fleur de Coton printmaking paper
Artwork: 44 × 27 cm
Frame: 72 × 52.5 cm
Framed in oak behind Artglass AR 70
AU $1400 each
Living Traces – landscape encountered through physical contact.
Plant material was placed directly onto cyanotype-coated paper. The paper was exposed to sunlight, then washed in water. The plant forms blocked and filtered the light, leaving a record of their presence.
In these works, the plants are both subject and participant. Their traces speak of endurance, adaptation and resilience within a landscape continually shaped by water, light and time.
Wet cyanotype over a botanical monotype print on 250gsm Fleur de Coton printmaking paper
Artwork: 56 × 38 cm
Frame: 72 × 52.5 cm
Framed in oak behind Artglass AR 70
AU $1200 each
The Forest Unfolding
A book asks us to slow down.
These artist books bring together printmaking, photography, poetry and structure.
Each book holds a different encounter with the forest and invites a slower way of looking: turning, unfolding and returning.
Like a walk beneath the canopy, each book reveals more as you move through it. Meaning gathers through layers, fragments and time.
Across their pages, close observation becomes memory, and separate encounters begin to form a larger story.
